The World According to Bertie

For a few moments there was silence. Then he said: “Do you think there’s much of a future for us?”

Pat raised her eyes to meet his. “What do you mean?”

“A future. You know. Are we going to carry on going out together?”

She seemed to relax – quite visibly – and it occurred to him that she might have misinterpreted him. He imagined that she had thought that he was proposing to her, and the thought appalled him. It was not that he would not like to marry Pat, but he had never thought of marriage to anybody. She would do fine, of course, if he did; but he hadn’t . . .

“I’d like to carry on seeing you,” she said, reaching for the menu. “So let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s just carry on.”

She reached across the table and took his hand, gave it a squeeze, released it. He thought: she might do that with a brother – take his hand, squeeze it, and let go. If he had been A Dinner Date with Pat . . . and a Surprise 141

Wolf, would she not have taken his hand, squeezed it, and then clung on?

“All right,” he said.

“Now let’s choose something to eat,” she said.

Matthew turned round to catch the proprietor’s eye. “I’m going to order that champagne,” he said. “Bollinger.”

She glanced at the menu. It looked expensive, and she could not tell the difference between champagnes. “A bit extravagant.”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

She said: “Have you forgiven me?”

He was puzzled. “For what? What have I got to forgive you for?”

“For that business over Angus Lordie’s painting. For selling it to . . .”

“To that man with the mustache? The Duke of . . .”

“Johannesburg. Yes. For doing all that. Because, anyway, I’ve sorted it all out.”

He looked puzzled. “Has he paid?”

He had not. But she had felt guilty about it and been in touch with him. He had said that he would pay, she explained. “He was very nice about it,” she said. “He said that he had been meaning to get in touch and that he was glad that I had phoned.

And he’s asked us to a party.”

“Hold on,” said Matthew. “He – the Duke, that is – has asked us – you and me, that is – to a party?”

“Yes,” said Pat. “Tonight. Any time before twelve. He said that things get a bit slower at midnight.”

Matthew shook his head. “I can’t believe this! You went off and set all this up – why didn’t you ask me? What if I had been going to do something else?”

“But you wouldn’t,” Pat said. “You never do . . .” She left the sentence unfinished, as well she might – she had not intended even to begin it. It was true, of course; Matthew never did anything, never went out. His life, when one came to think of it, was remarkably empty, not that she had meant to tell him that.

142 Like a Couple of Boxers, Waiting to Land a Blow But he had heard. “I never do what?” There was an edge to his voice, disclosing, perhaps, a sense of having been misjudged.

“You never do anything on a Tuesday night,” Pat said quickly.

“It’s Wednesday.”

“Same difference,” she said. “Anyway, the point is this: the Duke has invited us and I think we should go. And he said that he’d give us the cheque there. So we have to go.”

“All right,” said Matthew. But he did not think that it was all right; it was all wrong in his view. He was so passive, so useless, that she had to make the decisions. He looked down at his new pair of midbrown, handmade shoes that had arrived from John Lobb that morning. She had not noticed them; she never would.

43. Like a Couple of Boxers, Waiting to Land a Blow After dinner, Matthew and Pat took a taxi out to Single-Malt House, on the southern extremes of the city. Matthew had cheered up during the course of the meal, and they had both laughed to the brink of tears when a garlic-buttered snail had slipped off Matthew’s fork and disappeared down his shirt front.

Like a Couple of Boxers, Waiting to Land a Blow 143

“You’re so sweet,” Pat had said suddenly. “With your snails and . . .”

Matthew was not sure whether it was a good thing to be called sweet. Being called cute was a different matter; that was a compliment, and one did not have to be in short trousers to receive it. But most men, he thought, would object to being called sweet. Indeed, the Scots term sweetie-wife was commonly used, in a pejorative sense, for a man who liked to gossip with women. Matthew, for his part, saw nothing wrong in gossiping with women, which he rather enjoyed when he had the chance. He liked talking to Big Lou; he liked talking to Pat; in fact, he liked talking to any woman who was prepared to talk to him. At the heart of Scots culture, though, was an awful interdiction of such emotional closeness between men and women; a terrible separation inflicted by a distorted football-obsessed emotional tyranny, such a deep injury of the soul.

Yet it was not an evening to take offence at what was undoubtedly intended as a compliment, and so Matthew said nothing, but merely nodded in acknowledgement. “And you’re sweet too,”

he said, adding, “in a different way.”

The conversation moved on.